Urban Farming: Hydroponics in the City

10 Reasons Why We Need An EarthShip Home - Radically Sustainable BuildingsI have never heard of “Earthship” when looking at green homes before, I am so glad I stumbled upon this article as It has really made me think about my own set up and maybe even changed my mind and build one for my family. Basicly an Earthship is a very green, sustainable home. “Earthships can be built in any part of the world and still provide electricity, potable water, contained sewage treatment and sustainable food production. The Most Versatile and Economical sustainable green building design in the world” The great thing about these designs is Earthships catch water from the sky (rain & snow melt) and use it four times. Water is heated from the sun, biodiesel and/or natural gas.

[ZOOM IN] Urban farms give city folk 'food sovereignty'Choi Chang-hwan, a 71-year-old retired worker, right, and his wife show off the rooftop garden of their house in Junghwa-dong, Seoul. By Park Sang-moon When Choi Chang-hwan, a 71-year-old retired oil company worker, wakes up every morning to sweet chirpings of sparrows, his top priority isn't turning the pages of the morning newspaper while waiting for breakfast, like other aged Korean men. After jumping out of bed, Choi goes straight to the rooftop of his two-story house in Junghwa-dong, northeastern Seoul, to check the progress of his homegrown vegetables. "There's nothing like planting a seed, nurturing it and harvesting it", Choi said. "It's amazing to see how vegetables go from my roof to my table.

HydroponicsNASA researcher checking hydroponic onions with Bibb lettuce to his left and radishes to the right Hydroponics is a subset of hydroculture, the method of growing plants without soil, using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent.[1] Terrestrial plants may be grown with only their roots exposed to the mineral solution, or the roots may be supported by an inert medium, such as perlite or gravel. The nutrients in hydroponics can be from fish waste, duck manure, or normal nutrients. History[edit] In 1929, William Frederick Gericke of the University of California at Berkeley began publicly promoting that solution culture be used for agricultural crop production.[3][4] He first termed it aquaculture but later found that aquaculture was already applied to culture of aquatic organisms. Reports of Gericke's work and his claims that hydroponics would revolutionize plant agriculture prompted a huge number of requests for further information.

Eco Architecture - Beauty and Function - What is Eco Architecture?The sustainability movement is making an impact in many areas of daily life, including eco architecture. From utilizing local food sources to reducing energy consumption across the board, sustainability is rapidly becoming mainstream. The idea of being able to maintain, or support processes that are ecologically beneficial is the heart of sustainability. Sustainability now has a defined presence in the world of architecture. Eco architecture seeks to minimize the negative environmental impacts of structures through improved efficiency and the use of sustainable construction materials. The idea of not harming the environment plus using the most ecologically friendly construction materials is becoming the norm for designers and builders around the world.

Refugees in U.S. Take Up FarmingAmong the regular customers at the New Roots farm stand are Congolese women in flowing dresses, Somali Muslims in headscarves, Latino men wearing broad-brimmed hats and Burundian mothers in brightly patterned textiles who walk home balancing boxes of produce on their heads. New Roots, with 85 growers from 12 countries, is one of more than 50 community farms dedicated to refugee agriculture, an entrepreneurial movement spreading across the country. American agriculture has historically been forged by newcomers, like the Scandinavians who helped settle the Great Plains; today’s growers are more likely to be rural subsistence farmers from Africa and Asia, resettled in and around cities from New York, Burlington, Vt., and Lowell, Mass., to Minneapolis, Phoenix and San Diego. With language and cultural hurdles, and the need to gain access to land, financing and marketing, farm ownership for refugees can be very difficult.

Permaculture Design PrinciplesThe foundations of permaculture are the ethics (centre) which guide the use of the 12 design principles, ensuring that they are used in appropriate ways. These principles are seen as universal, although the methods used to express them will vary greatly according to the place and situation. They are applicable to our personal, economic, social and political reorganisation as illustrated in the permaculture flower. Each principle can be thought of as a door that opens into whole systems thinking, providing a different perspective that can be understood at varying levels of depth and application. Click on each of the principles icons to find out more, including a catchy tune about each of them – available from the album Permaculture: A Rhymer’s Manual. A free poster download of the principles is also available.

Melbourne penalizes city folk who grow veggies on vacant landBy Christopher BantickWeekly Times First it was sea-changers then tree-changers that moved into country communities looking for rural bliss. The next migration may be vegie-changers. This is a likely scenario if Melbourne councils continue to whack sky-high rates on vacant land used for vegetable gardens.Difference Between Organic Gardening and Permaculture - Permaculture Visions Online InstituteThe Permaculture garden is a lot more than an organic garden. Intelligent design uses free, sustainable energies and resources. It is energy-wise and collaborative to minimise the impact of a site on the surrounding environment.

The Commons as a Different Engine for InnovationI delivered the following remarks on May 11 as part of The Illahee Lecture Series 2011, "Searching for Solutions: Innovation for the Public Good," in Portland, Oregon. This evening, I’d like to get innovative about how we think about innovation itself. The corporate cliché is to “think outside the box.”

Volunteer-based hunger reliefKeep Austin Fed is a volunteer based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that gathers wholesome and nutritious surplus food from commercial kitchens and distributes it to area charities that serve hungry people in need. Our mission: Sharing healthy nutrition with our hungry neighbors by keeping surplus food out of the waste stream. In 2004, founder Randy Rosens saved high quality catered food from an Austin Museum of Art Fundraising event at Laguna Gloria that was headed to the dumpster. The food fed a group of women and children living at a shelter in South Austin. Today we rescue thousands of meals each month, feeding hundreds of our neighbors living with food insecurity — the 1 in 7 people who do not know where their next meal will come from.